Chapter 2: Planning

Mission, Vision, & Corporate Values

1) Mission and value statements are indicative of the direction in which a company is
headed. What are typically included in the statements of mission and values of well-
known companies in the United States? Please comment.
a. Mission and Value statement of organizations are being considered as important
because it is the culture, value and approach that the organization will follow in
order to achieve the objectives of the business. If we look at some of the mission
and value statements of some well-known companies in the United States we will
understand the objective.
i. Amazon.com: "To be Earth's most customer centric company, where
customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online,
and endeavors to offer its customer the lowest possible price.
1. The objective is to provide the customers convenience of buying
anything online and that too at the lowest price and the mission is
to be the most customer centric organization of the world.
ii. Google: "To organize the world's information and make it universally
accessible and useful"
1. The objective is to organize the information of anything in the
world and make it useful an accessible to everyone.
iii. Coca-Cola: "To refresh the world.. to inspire moments of optimism an
happiness... to create value and make a difference"
1. The objectives are to refresh the world, relive optimistic moments
and create value.
iv. From the statements we can understand that the basic objective and
future road map is defined by organizations.
2) You want to start a company to make products to extend the time that senior adults can live
independently. As much as possible, you will modify existing products such the Amazon Echo
devices to add any needed functionality, and develop additional products as needed for other
functions of daily life, such as cooking, toileting, dressing, entertainment, etc.
a. Write an appropriate mission statement for the new company.
i. Mission statement: why the company exists, what entities does it serve, what it
will do to serve them
ii. Our company exists to help senior adults live more independently through the
development of unique products as well as the modification of existing products
to enhance the ability of senior adults to conduct basic functions of daily living.

b. Write an appropriate vision statement for the new company.

i. Vision statement: what are the aspirations of the company with respect to asset
size, market position, business standing, ranking in industrial sectors, etc.
ii. Our company aims to become the largest and most highly regarded company for
the provision of daily living devices for senior adults.
iii. May include phrases such as “rapid growth to meet needs of aging population”,
“high quality, dependable products easily used by persons who may be
experiencing auditory, visual, physical, and/or cognitive disabilities”, etc.
 c. Value system (not asked for): five or six specific corporate values emphasized by the
company

SWOT
Internal Characteristics

*Specific to company’s resources: Do we have appropriate personnel? Finances? Connections?

External Characteristics
Chapter 9: Leading
Maslow Hierarchy

3) You are the manager of a project leader named Jeff who typically does an excellent job
for the company. For the past few weeks, however, Jeff doesn’t seem to be focused on
his work, and his projects are falling behind schedule. When you call him into your office
to discuss the progress of his projects, you discover that Jeff is going through a bitter
divorce, and he is concerned that he will lose his house and the relationship with his
children.
a. How can you explain Jeff’s lack of focus, using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?
i. Jeff’s social needs are not being met and his fear of losing his house and
his children also causes his safety needs to be in jeopardy. Because his
needs are not being met on the lower levels of the hierarchy, he cannot
focus/achieve the higher levels of need such as self-actualization. He is
current putting energy into the lower needs and therefore lacks the ability
to be the best he can be at work. As a result, he is showing decreases in
productivity.
ii. House = safety; children = social or maybe esteem
b. As Jeff’s manager, you are held accountable for the lack of progress on his
projects. What should you do about Jeff? Provide your reasoning for your
decision.
i. Jeff’s lack of productivity is ultimately related to the stress he feels from
his non work life. To help reduce the amount of stress he feels, I think you
 should offer one of two options for him. You and Jeff can work together to
decide how to redesign the demands of his job. Maybe there are task
other employees are completing that he can do that would be easier for
him to focus on. He would still be required to do an equal amount of work
as his peers, but the tasks may be better suited for him in this particular
time in his life. Also, if your organization offers it, Jeff’s job redesign could
take the form of flextime or telecommuting. It would allow him the
opportunity keep a more appropriate work life balance. The second
recommendation that could be given to Jeff is a Employee Assistance
Program if the job you both work at offers it. This program could provide
Jeff with relative information for how to navigate and deal with his work
life balance as it pertains to what he is experiencing.

Examples

1) Hoffman, author of “Prescription for Transitioning Engineers Into Managers,”

Engineering Management Journal (September 1989), believes that a management
education program should have three elements:
o Behavioral – People skills (motivation, team building, communications and
delegation).
o Cognitive (production, marketing, finance, control).
o Environmental (markets, competition, customers, political, social and
economical environment in which the organization operates)
 The first two elements appear to be self-evident. Explain why the third
element, the environmental, is important?
 The external environment of any firm is composed of many
entities such as customers, competitors, government and various
other agencies. For a manager to be effective, this is quite evident
that he or she must be having detailed and comprehensive insight
about the environment n which the firm is operating. There are a
number of external factors which have the capabilities of
impacting the business of the firm both positively and negatively.
 For example, if the competitor decides to introduce a new product
with the latest technology and innovative features, then the firm
could face the threat of losing its market. Apart from this, there
can be various regulations and the rules formed by the
government to regulate and control the activities of the business
organization. f the firms do not take care of all these factors, it can
hamper its profitability but also the sustainability could also be
hampered,
 In order to enjoy the competence in the market, only those firms
remain at the top which has a close eye on the external and
internal environment of the firms this will provide the business to
foresee the various opportunities and threats which could be
presented by the environment and the management can be ready
for facing these challenges head on.
 In order to create the foundation for the business, it is important to
have the initial strategy and vision and mission. If we look at the
present business and economic environment then it is quite
 evident that the existing scenario is quite dynamic and troubling
and thus the businesses need to access the external environment
and balance themselves to match to the requirement of the
present situation. Plans can help the business organization to
relate back and follow if there is a need to referring something. At
present, intuitive thinking is quite significant. There can be several
incidences whereby despite having the well-established plans and
strategies, there can be the requirement of something new to
implement to address the threats or opportunities. This is the
reason why many firms are now not having the same strategy as
when they initiated their business but the core of their business
remains the same.

1) The plant manager noticed a need to lessen the amount of waste materials,
which occur in the production process. A task force was set up, composed of the
plant manager and two of her supervisors, to examine the problem. They met for
three months and regularly published the task force objectives and findings on the plant
bulletin board. The plant manager found, to her surprise, that the workers on the shop
floor exhibited limited interest in the task force and ignored the bulletin board entirely. At
the end of the three-month period, the task force came up with several excellent
recommendations, which required changes in work practices. Most of the workers
implemented the recommended changes very reluctantly, and some even secretly
worked to sabotage the new practices. Eventually, all recommendations were withdrawn.
What went wrong? How should the plant manager have handled this case?
a. What went wrong?
i. Possibly the plant manager could not have been very articulate in defining
the change and benefits resulting from the initiative. This could possibly
lead to the folks on shop floor not taking recommendations seriously.
ii. Unless the benefits are aligned to business goals and resulting value
perception is clear for the ground level workers, they would fail to realize
the true potential of the exercise and would not see the bigger picture. In
this case, reducing the waste could lead to higher margins for company,
and that could translate into better benefits for workers. A clear value
proposition like this could have been missing from the exercise brief.
iii. The plant manager was not very inclusive in forming the expert
committee- it included only herself and the supervisors. This could have
possibly resulted in the perception that the changes are driven by top
management without considering the advice/inputs from the ground level
workers. This could possibly lead to the ground level workers being
 reluctant in implementing the recommendations. Some even went to the
point of sabotaging the initiative.
iv. The communication strategy was passive, sticking findings on the notice
board was not a very catchy way to announce the findings and
recommendations.
v. The plant manager and her supervisors, when they came up with
recommendations possibly did not consider the scenario- how their
recommendations affected the experience of shop floor workers in their
day-to-day life. May be some recommendations were not followed due to
their negative implications on the shop floor experience.
vi. Possibly, the shop floor workers were not trained to implement the
recommendations.
vii. Possibly there was no support structure to assist employees to adopt the
recommendations and adjust to the change.
b. How should the plant manager have handled this case?
i. The plant manager should have clearly articulated the change and
benefits resulting from the initiative and communicated them effectively to
the shop floor workers. Usually, a change or benefit must tie to the
personal aspirations of shop floor workers; directly or indirectly.
Suggested benefits could be better compensation or better shop floor
experience for workers etc.
ii. Clear value propositions must be defined and explained to the shop floor
workers in their language, in order to gain their confidence and buy in.
iii. The expert committee should have had representations from the entire
strata of the organization. It would not only have been inclusive, but also
would have brought perspectives of workers across the shop floor in to
the committee. Inclusiveness goes a long way in gaining the buy in of the
workers.
iv. The communication of the findings and recommendations must be very
active: It could be through stand-up meetings every day or through
meeting group of people every day. A feedback mechanism would have
helped fine tune the recommendations and made it a two-way
communication instead of being one way communication that failed.
v. Training to workers and establishing the support structure to enable
workers to adapt to change is a must. Any change that takes a route with
deviations from regular workflow will need efforts to be driven. Training
and support structure makes it easier for people to adapt to change.
2) Conflicts between technologists and managers may arise, when the technical
professionals (with the skill to make a decisions) have to deal with a manager (who has
the right to decide). Why such conflicts often exist in organizations wherein everyone
works toward the same common goal?
a. Conflicts refer to some form of disagreement, friction, or discord in which the
beliefs or actions of one person are either resisted by or unacceptable to some
other person. It may occur between individuals, groups, or organizations.
Following are some reasons or sources of conflicts in an organization:
i. Interpersonal- Different personalities work together to achieve a single
goal. Hence there is a huge possibility of clashing their perceptions,
thinking etc., which may result in conflicts.
ii. New technology- Adaption of new technology become stressful, and there
are so many people who are very bad in handling stress. Hence this
situation may sometimes be resultant of conflict.
iii. External factors- There may be some economic factors such as changing
markets, recessions, effects of free trade between companies etc. These
are also considered as a reason of conflicts.
iv. Poor communication- There may be sometimes happening of poor
communication between the supervisor and employee, which may lead to
misunderstanding etc. This situation easily converts in conflicts.
v. Harassment- It is obvious that occurrence of any type of harassment
results in conflicts.
vi. Lack of teamwork
vii. Lack of clarity in roles and responsibilities
viii. Different attitudes, values or perceptions